corner and came fast up the hill and stopped almost without sound at the foot of my steps. It was a big-black sedan with the lines of a Cadillac. It could have been Linda Loring’s car, except for two things. Nobody opened a door and the windows on my side were all shut tight. I waited and listened, crouched against the bush, and there was nothing to listen to and nothing to wait for. Just a dark car motionless at the foot of my redwood steps, with the windows closed. If its motor was still running I couldn’t hear it. Then a big red spotlight clicked on and the beam struck twenty feet beyond the corner of the house. And then very slowly the big car backed until the spotlight could swing across the front of the house, across the hood and up.
Policemen don’t drive Cadillacs. Cadillacs with red spotlights belong to the big boys, mayors and police commissioners, perhaps District Attorneys. Perhaps hoodlums. The spotlight traversed. I went down flat, but it found me just the same. It held on me. Nothing else. Still the car door didn’t open, still the house was silent and without light.
Then a siren growled in low pitch just for a second or two and stopped. And then at last the house was full of lights and a man in a white dinner jacket came out to the head of the steps and looked sideways along the wall and the shrubbery.
“Come on in, cheapie,” Menendez said with a chuckle, “You’ve got company.”
I could have shot him with no trouble at all. Then he stepped back and it was too late—even if I could have done it. Then a window went down at the back of the car and I could hear the thud as it opened. Then a machine pistol went off and fired a short burst into the slope of the bank thirty feet away from me. “Come on in, cheapie,” Menendez said again from the doorway. “There just ain’t anywhere else to go.”
So I straightened up and went and the spotlight followed me accurately. I put the gun back in the holster on my belt. I stepped up onto the small redwood landing and went in through the door and stopped just inside. A man was sitting across the room with his legs crossed and a gun resting sideways on his thigh. He looked rangy and tough and his skin had that dried-out look of people who live in sun-bleached climates. He was wearing a dark brown gabardine-type windbreaker and the zipper was open almost to his waist. He was looking at me and neither his eyes nor the gun moved. He was as calm as an adobe wall in the moonlight.
48
I looked at him too long. There was a brief half-seen move at my side and a numbing pain in the point of my shoulder. My whole arm went dead to the fingertips. I turned and looked at a big mean-looking Mexican. He wasn’t grinning, he was just watching me. The .45 in his brown hand dropped to his side. He had a mustache and his head bulged with oily black hair brushed up and back and over and down. There was a dirty sombrero on the back of his head and the leather chin strap hung loose in two strands down the front of a stitched shirt that smelled of sweat. There is nothing tougher than a tough Mexican, just as there is nothing gentler than a gentle Mexican, nothing more honest than an honest Mexican, and above all nothing sadder than a sad Mexican. This guy was one of the hard boys. They don’t come any harder anywhere.
I rubbed my arm. It tingled a little but the ache was still there and the numbness. If I had tried to pull a gun I should probably have dropped it.
Menendez held his hand out towards the slugger. Without seeming to look he tossed the gun and Menendez caught it. He stood in front of me now and his face glistened. “Where would you like it, cheapie?” His black eyes danced.
I just looked at him. There is no answer to a question like that.
“I asked you a question, cheapie.”
I wet my lips and asked one back. “What happened to Agostino? I thought he was your gun handler.”
“Chick went soft,” he said gently.
“He was always soft—like his boss.”
The man in the chair flicked his eyes. He almost but not quite smiled. The tough boy who had paralyzed my arm neither moved nor spoke. I knew he was breathing. I could smell that.
“Somebody bump into your arm, cheapie?”
“I tripped over an enchilada.”
Negligently, not quite looking at me even, he slashed me across the face with the gun barrel.
“Don’t get gay with me, cheapie. You’re out of time for all that. You got told and you got told nice. When I take the trouble to call around personally and tell a character to lay off—he lays off, Or else he lays down and don’t get up.”
I could feel a trickle of blood down my cheek. I could feel the full numbing ache of the blow in my cheekbone. It spread until my whole head ached. It hadn’t been a hard blow, but the thing he used was hard. I could still talk, and nobody tried to stop me.
“How come you do your own slugging, Mendy? I thought that was coolie labor for the sort of boys that beat up Big Willie Magoon.”
“It’s the personal touch,” he said softly, “on account of I had personal reasons for telling you. The Magoon job was strictly business. He got to thinking he could push me around—me that bought his clothes and his cars and stocked his safe deposit box and paid off the trust deed on his house. These vice squad babies are all the same. I even paid school bills for his kid. You’d think the bastard would have some gratitude. So what does he do? He walks into my private office and slaps me around in front of the help.”
“On account of why?” I asked him, in the vague hope of getting him mad at somebody else.
“On account of some lacquered chippie said we used loaded dice. Seems like the bim was one of his sleepy- time gals. I had her put out of the club—with every dime she brought in with her.”
“Seems understandable,” I said. “Magoon ought to know no professional gambler plays crooked games. He doesn’t have to. But what have I done to you?”
He hit me again, thoughtfully. “You made me look bad. In my racket you don’t tell a guy twice. Not even a hard number. He goes out and does it, or you ain’t got control. You ain’t got control, you ain’t in business.”
“I’ve got a hunch that there’s a little more to it than that,” I said. “Excuse me if I reach for a handkerchief.”
